a. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains to an adapter for playing or recording musical selections and other audio programs stored in a digital medium such as a flash memory card using a standard stereo system, and more particularly to an adapter which uses the cassette mechanism of the stereo system as the interface for the digital medium.
b. Description of the Prior Art
Rapid advances in computer technology and related fields have resulted in very small energy efficient and inexpensive data storage media such as flash memory cards. While these media were primarily designed for use as memory for storing digital data, for example in laptop computers, digital cameras and other similar applications, they can also be used to store digital musical selections or other audio programs. For example, using MPEG2 or other data compression techniques, a musical selection of about 4 minutes can now be stored in a digital memory of 2 megabytes, and can be replayed in an acceptable manner. Moreover, flash memory cards are expected in the near future which have capacities of up to 16 megabytes or even more.
Hence, using these flash memory cards it is possible to distribute music to the general public using either standard venues such as record stores, mail order catalogs and so on, as well as non-conventional venues, such as the Internet.
A major problem in introducing a new medium such as flash cards is that they are incompatible with presently available stereo systems. The music-playing public is accustomed to playing music using standard stereo systems, i.e., systems which can play music originating either from live transmissions, such as AM or FM radio or TV, or from prerecorded media such as records, Cds or analog or digital cassettes. A typical audiophile has many prerecorded musical selections in one or more of these formats and naturally has a tendency to resist new types of prerecorded media which are not compatible.